Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

The horrible massacre at Virginia Tech is like something out of a nightmare.  It’s very hard to believe that such a thing could ever happen, and CNN’s 72-point headlines only make the experience more surreal.  Less than 24 hours have gone by, and already we have a cell phone video where you can hear bullets popping in the distance, eyewitness accounts from multiple students, and a lengthy commentary on Time’s website that criticizes the college administration.  Welcome to 2007, where the speed of tragedy increases exponentially, and law enforcement officials and heads of the college are pressured to make statements before the victims have even been counted.

I’m sure that in the coming weeks there will be a search for reasons, as always.  Why did he do it?  There’s no good answer, really.  Take Andrew Kehoe, for instance.  In 1927 he bombed his county’s school, killing forty-five people, to protest property taxes.  These people operate in their own reality, and they process the world in a way that no sane person can ever really understand.  Nothing justifies this kind of violence.  The warped, fragmented answers we eventually pry out of the tragedy will never be enough.  My heart goes out to the victims, friends, and families of Virginia Tech.